Dark House

Awful movie. What's worse, it's so bad you can't make much of a judgment about the cast other than how pretty they are.

The setup is basic haunted house horror. As a child, Claire entered the Darrode House, saw something terrifying, passed out and for years since has been haunted with horrifying nightmares. As a young wannabe actor, she refuses to take medications that cut her off from her feelings. Her acting class runs an exercise of no value other than to give the audience a thumbnail stereotype of each character and then we get the horror-meister who wants to setup a reality/horror type show in the old Darrode House. Claire jumps at the chance to face her fears, buttressed by a crowd of people she knows and talks them into becoming the cast for the new show.

What follows is the most ridiculous, contrived horror-schlock that has nothing to do with the setup, no rising action, just scene after scene of hellish horror with no real context.

This was so bad that I couldn't make it through the whole thing. Not frightening and not even titillating enough to put up with how horrible it is as a motion picture. About halfway through my wife and I finally gave up on it. it's so bad that were I to have gone to see it in a walk-in theater, I would have walked out.

Someone PLEASE stop Darin Scott before he writes and directs again! Or get him some classes in screen writing and directing and a decent mentor?

It was a nice idea, and the little twist at the end was a nice touch. However, I could not get past how morosely less than even one-dimensional the characters were, and how laughably rote, non-creative and cliché-ridden the dialogue was during this movie.

The bare outline of the story is intriguing, but the script really was terrible. The acting was either waaaaaaay overdone or shifted from being overdone to underdone and back again. Now, I can forgive such things if the proper atmosphere, suspense and effects are plausibly included. This was not the case with 'Dark House'. I am of the old school, and would rather see authentic make-up and gore effects. I cannot stand CGI effects that look worse than a Playstation 1 game. To this film's credit, it does mix both; however, the absurd CGI effects detracted from this film big-time in my mind.

Skip this one, it isn't so bad it's funny, the death and gore is very average, the 'brief nudity' (if that's your bag) is CGI, and the 'Dark House' looks just like a normal suburban house. It's not what it claims to be or what you think it might be. It's nothing special.

Actors work at a fake haunted house only to find out it's real.

DARK HOUSE aims for the always popular haunted house movie but falls way short. For starters, it takes 30 minutes to get to the house & no scares once there.

Coombs is good but the back story is lame & grinds the movie to a halt every time it's explained, which is often. The other actors are all serviceable but no one stands out. And, I'll add, a twist so cornball it needs to be explained.

It does not fall under the so bad it's good category, as it's not bad, just boring.

For Coombs fans only.

A troupe of actors hired for a haunted house attraction soon find that they are working in a true house of horror.

Can Jeffrey Combs carry a film? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it is nice to see that he actually appears as a main character here and not simply for five minutes so they can slap his name on the cover to draw in horror fans. While this may not be one of his best roles, he at least spends a fair amount of time on screen.

Unfortunately, there is nothing new about people going into a haunted house and soon finding out it is really a house full of horrors. I have seen one film already this month based on such a premise -- 2007's "House of Fears". While this may be the slightly better film -- and I stress "may" be -- it scores zero points for originality.

Solid sound design with good use of surround. The picture looked boring. Very unimaginative story, totally unbelievable and a bit of a mess. Barely acceptable horror film lacking anything engaging. The problem is that they don't understand why people like dark house rides so when they make a film of it they get it wrong.